EGU22-11217
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-11217
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Inner-basin evaluation of the changes in the (lateral) fluxes of the distributed wflow_sbm hydrological model due to spatial scaling

Jerom Aerts1, Rolf Hut1, Nick van de Giesen1, Niels Drost2, Peter Kalvera2, Willem van Verseveld3, and Albrecht Weerts3,4
Jerom Aerts et al.
  • 1Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands (j.p.m.aerts@tudelft.nl)
  • 2Netherlands eScience Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 3Department of Inland Water Systems, Deltares, Delft, The Netherlands
  • 4Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

We conduct an inner-basin evaluation of the (lateral) fluxes of the wflow_sbm model at 3km, 1km and 200m spatial resolutions the CAMELS dataset. Previous work (Aerts 2021) has shown that while the quality of streamflow predictions at basin outlets might show small differences between basins for the different model resolutions, inner basin lateral flows can differ greatly over different resolutions.

In this work we study the impact of model resolution on rainfall partitioning and subsequent impact on lateral flows. To quantify terrain characteristics, we apply the method of Gharari et al. (2011) to classify parts of each basin as wetland, hillslope, or plateau. For the different model resolutions, we calculate how much rain falls on the different classifications and study lateral flow within the basin per terrain classification type.

The results of this work will shed light on how models run at different resolutions have different internal lateral flows while still generating similar and adequate streamflow predictions. This insight will help in making informed decisions on what resolution to run a model at for a given problem to optimize both output and internal realism of the model estimations.

This study is carried out within the eWaterCycle framework; allowing for a FAIR by design research setup that is scalable in terms of case study areas and hydrological models.

How to cite: Aerts, J., Hut, R., van de Giesen, N., Drost, N., Kalvera, P., van Verseveld, W., and Weerts, A.: Inner-basin evaluation of the changes in the (lateral) fluxes of the distributed wflow_sbm hydrological model due to spatial scaling, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-11217, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-11217, 2022.